DWP informed by major bank that 63,000 benefit claimants are breaking rules

The Department for Work and Pensions has been told by one bank that 63,000 claimants may have broken benefit rules. The DWP has rolled out bank account checks - with over 60,000 being paid too much money, according to data from an unnamed bank.

The parliamentary petition against greater financial surveillance powers for the DWP has passed the 20,000 signatures required for the government to make a response to it. The DWP denied it would be given access to people’s bank accounts and be able to see what they were spending their money on.

It said the powers proposed for the DWP would enable them to oblige banks and other financial organisations to do that, and pass on details of any benefit claimants identified as having too much in savings or spending too much time abroad.

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The DWP will work with 15 banks to crack down on fraud with the financial institutions relaying suspicions over fraudulent activity, relating to people's accounts and incomes. After testing bank account snooping powers, the DWP confirmed: "Among these, approximately 60,000 accounts were at risk of breaching the capital rule (8%) and 3,000 accounts at risk of breaching the abroad rule (less than 1%).

"For accounts at risk of breaching the capital rule, the average monthly balance was £50,000 and about 50% of those accounts were joint accounts." It added: "The above results of the small-scale tests with two banks and building societies indicate a strong potential for the use of banking data to identify possible capital and abroad fraud and error across a range of means-tested benefits."

It comes amid widespread fury over the powers, with one petition writing: "Most benefit claimants are not fraudsters, and we believe Ministers are taking too aggressive an approach towards benefit claimants, in a way which denies freedom and rights of privacy, and seems to treat all benefit claimants like fraudsters.

"We believe the Government's approach to benefit claimants is undermining their Rights. It is now time for those Rights to be upheld and preserved. Unless a person is suspected of fraudulent or criminal activities, their privacy of bank accounts and financial standing should be protected. It is totally unacceptable for a Government department to infringe and deny these freedoms regardless of whether the individual is a benefit claimant or not."